


I Wasn't Your First Kiss (But I Could Be Your Last)

by waltzmatildah



Category: Grey's Anatomy
Genre: F/M, Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-23
Updated: 2017-04-23
Packaged: 2018-10-22 22:20:29
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,702
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10706313
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/waltzmatildah/pseuds/waltzmatildah
Summary: Set post the season 6 finale.Everybody else falls apart...





	I Wasn't Your First Kiss (But I Could Be Your Last)

  


_there's no up_   
_there's no down_   
_side to side_   
_lost and found_   
_'til I find my way back home_

  


 

She's curled in a chair, feet tucked beneath her and slowly going numb. Her chin is propped on one hand, the angle of her wrist acute.

It too is going numb.

She's staring at him. Silently begging him to open his eyes, to wake up, to look at her with something resembling life. But there is a tube shoved down his throat and another disappearing into his side and waking up would actually be a really bad option for him right now.

She can hear voices in the hall. A rumbling murmur that waxes and wanes as the hours pass. The electronic beep of the heart rate monitor he's plugged in to punctuates more horrific re-tellings of the days events than one person could ever need to hear.

Mark appears periodically in her periphery. Mirage-like. She pretends not to notice and he pretends not to care until he sighs, turns, shuffles away again.

Taking a little more air with him each time he leaves.

The repetitive nature of his action, the structured regularity with which he appears; it's oddly comforting and painfully suffocating all in the same jagged exhale.

Though she'll never tell them that. Either of them.

 

 

 

\- - -

 

 

 

_Owen declares his undying love for Cristina in the heady aftermath of gunshots and blood loss. Her head is still spinning and her heart is still somewhere high in the back of her throat and so she forgives him, and kisses him, and wraps herself in his arms as he swears into the nape of her neck that he'll never let her go._

_Not seventy two hours later he's moaning into a mane of blonde hair and running his calloused palms over the achingly familiar hips of his best friend._

 

 

 

\- - -

 

 

 

It's five days before he regains consciousness. A steady stream of well meaning visitors speak at her, and around her, and through her; words and sentences that mean nothing.

White noise and static. Like falling snow.

She's beyond responding and eventually they give up. Until she's half convinced she's not even there anymore. Like her body has vaporised and is just shifting dust settling at their feet.

His eyes flit sideways at the slightest sound. Sluggish and pulled open to half mast.

Though the terror in them is real enough.

She looks away. Most of the time.

Tells herself it's what he would want.

Though her fingers tighten in his and he returns the favour with as much strength as he can manage until he drifts back to sleep and his grip relaxes into a soft curl of fingers and palm and warm skin.

 

 

 

\- - -

 

 

 

She takes him home two days before she's supposed to but weeks after she thought she would. The fact that he stayed without fight for so long says more than she's willing to admit.

 

 

 

\- - -

 

 

 

He's shaky in the car, folded into himself like he's waiting for the world to tilt on its axis once more and send him sliding off into another oblivion.

She knows the feeling.

Knows it with an aching familiarity that has taken up permanent residency somewhere between her shoulder blades and is refusing to budge.

 

 

 

\- - -

 

 

 

_Callie and Arizona make a pact to live in the moment. To see what happens next and to face whatever it is together. Surgery. Children. Life._

_It's idyllic and it's naive and it lasts all of about eleven days._

 

 

 

\- - -

 

 

 

The house is echoing-ly sparse and suffocatingly oppressive all in the same ticking minute. Like they're living crammed alongside the ghosts of the people they once were.

People they will never be again.

Tracks appear in the carpet and curtains tear. Dandelions sprout in the cracked concrete and the front door sticks a little more completely when the weather is wet.

Which it is. Perpetually.

She thinks, maybe, they should get their own place.

 

 

 

\- - -

 

 

 

He has nightmares. Not often but often enough.

Snaps violently to waking, drenched in sweat and barely breathing, and if she's lucid enough to realise then she'll pretend she hasn't noticed, that she's still asleep, that his secret is safe for another twenty four hours.

And when he's calm again she'll wrap herself around him, arms and legs and heart beats, and listen as he drifts back to sleep.

It makes her wonder what he actually remembers because she's always assumed that it wouldn't be much. But she's heard the horror stories. Stories about Reed Adamson. Stories about blood. Stories about elevator escapes amid unimaginable agony.

And she'll never ask because he won't want to tell her, and he'll lie, and he'll dissolve even further into himself than he already is, but she expects it's so very much more than he'll ever admit to.

 

 

 

\- - -

 

 

 

_Derek recovers slowly and with a surly snarl that pushes everyone away. Meredith retreats into a bottomless glass of tequila and the baby that she never got to meet remains her cross to bear alone as blueprints and scrawled notes about building materials are pushed to the very back of their closet._

_As the days slide one into the next the post-it above their bed fades more than a little at the seams._

 

 

 

\- - -

 

 

 

She heads to work with a panicked reluctance. Half convinced that he'll be up and gone by the time she gets home again. A dip in the mattress and a half eaten bowl of cereal in the sink the only tangible proof that he'd ever been there in the first place.

But he's always right where she left him, curtains drawn and blankets pulled tight around his shoulders and it should be more disconcerting than it is.

She should question him but she doesn't. She should probably talk to someone else about it but she can't. She should probably worry about it more than she can bring herself to.

Because worrying would mean admitting it's not healthy. And admitting it's not healthy would mean she hasn't been enough for him. And admitting she hasn't been enough, well that's just not an option.

Because she's all he has. And he's all she's got.

And anything less than that is not an option.

 

 

 

\- - -

 

 

 

It gets better without an intervention.

At least, that's what she tells herself as she breathes a sigh of relief into her fogged reflection. He eats semi regularly. And not just cereal and coffee and beer that he doesn't think she knows about. And some days she gets home and the curtains have been roughly pulled aside and there'll be a damp towel on the bathroom floor that tells her he's at least done _something_.

He's due back at the hospital part time in just over a week. There's not once inch of him that is ready.

She suggests a delay. More physiotherapy. More time. Tries to frame it in a way that will give him the option of making it _his_ decision.

Fails dismally.

 

 

 

\- - -

 

 

 

_Chief Webber regains his mantle. It's the only thing about this whole mess that feels right._

 

 

 

\- - -

 

 

 

He makes it to just after lunch on day two before Bailey pulls her aside and whispers that she's herded him into an on call room and threatened him with grievous bodily harm if he so much as thinks about moving for the rest of the day.

And she's softer in the aftermath, softer than she used to be, like a little piece of her fire burned out when the barrel of a gun was pointed at her face. But in the end she's still Bailey. And no one says no to Bailey.

So the on call room is where she finds him.

A tightly wound ball of fury and frustration and only seconds away from planting his fist through the plasterboard wall.

He deflates when she walks in. Visibly. Sinks to the mattress and folds his head into his hands. Exhausted and angry and scared and a thousand other adjectives that he'll never admit to but no longer has the energy to disguise.

At least, not in front of her.

She counts it as a small victory.

 

 

 

\- - -

 

 

 

People tiptoe. Around them. Around each other. They use the stairs more often than not and only venture alone into supply areas when circumstance dictates they must. The conference room where make-shift surgery was performed remains off limits; an unspoken agreement based on respect and more than a little unwanted pity.

Walking across the catwalk has become an exercise in restraint not to sprint or take a swan dive over the railing.

There is an untenable edge to the hospital, bleached into its walls. Simmering under the surface, a hidden tension that threatens to send them all into the abyss.

Ghosts roam the corridors and not all of them are dead.

 

 

 

\- - -

 

 

 

_Mark up and leaves. Heads south to get away from the never-ending rain, or so his resignation letter says. He doesn't say goodbye and it's three days before anyone notices that he's gone._

_That Teddy is the first is a telling tribute to the time he spent there. He came unwanted and he left the same way._

 

 

 

\- - -

 

 

 

It takes eight months before he's someone that she recognises again. Smirks and snide remarks and crude comments about her boobs. He still flinches when she runs her fingers down his ribs and she still pretends she doesn't notice when he does so, but everything else is fading fast and she's beginning to wonder if maybe they might just make it to the end after all.

They live among the dust and the debris of everyone else. Wrapped in a clawing stranglehold, like they're the only things keeping each other together.

And that desperate fact might not be too far from the truth.

Their reality is bittersweet because they've always been the couple most voted to self destruct and circumstance says it should have happened months ago. But they circle apartment listings in the weekend newspapers and have whole conversations without needing to speak a word. And years pass, seasons change, the others come but more often than not they go until, in the end, it's just them.

Fingers linked loosely together and entwined on a forgotten promise desperately wrought in their darkest hour.


End file.
